'Mission Accomplished' Reversed: Iraq Is the New Afghanistan

Syria has become the new Afghanistan -- a center of attraction and a training ground for the next generation of jihadist fighters who will be able to make use elsewhere of the fighting experience they get there. And now the same thing has happened in Iraq. ISIS cleverly used the porous borders with Syria to draw jihadists initially recruited for Syria into the neighboring country.

ISIS can thus create the reign it so desires over an extensive territory comprising parts of Syria and northern Iraq. Since the Americans destroyed the Afghan symbiosis between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, no terror group has achieved anything like this. And it will draw more Islamist radicals from around the world who will either join ISIS or donate money. From that point of view, the Mosul victory was a successful PR coup.